Silverstreet is a small town in South Carolina. Moldova is a small country in Eastern Europe. Until recently, diminutive size was about all they had in common.
But next December, they will be joined at the hands, feet, heads and hearts when a $3,000 donation from Silverstreet’s Saluda River Bible Hour Chapel helps provide shoes and other warm clothing for the orphans of the country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine.
The gift from a congregation that averages 20-30 people at its Sunday services is part of a Children’s Emergency Relief International program called Operation Knit Together.
Pastor Buster Youngblood attended a revival at First Baptist Church, Gloverville, in May and heard Dearing Garner talking about CERI’s effort to provide the warm clothing to every resident of the country’s 66 orphanages. The children often suffer frostbite in the brutal winters from lack of heat in the buildings and lack of adequate clothes.
The church gives about $5,000 to various orphanages each year, according to Youngblood, and decided to support the CERI volunteers who will personally fit each child with shoes and pass out gospel tracts in English, Russian and Moldovan.
“This just shows that every church and every individual can do something,” said Garner, who joined the CERI staff after more than 30 years as a Texas pastor. “This is an open door, a special opportunity that may never come again, to put shoes on the feet of these children and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.”